


Another One

by merryghoul



Category: The Initiation of Sarah (2006)
Genre: Fire Powers, Fraternities & Sororities, Gen, Louisiana, On the Run, Post-Canon, Revenge, Shapeshifting, Staged Crime Scene, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 09:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18246629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: At first, the plan was to avenge Alpha Nu Gamma.  Then Esme discovered she had new powers.





	Another One

**Author's Note:**

> Short plot summary, if you’ve never seen the movie: Two sisters go to a university and are caught between two magic sororities, one good and one evil (complete with goat and human virgin sacrifices). This fic is set after the movie’s ending, with Esme, the Vice President of the evil sorority, Alpha Nu Gamma, surviving the good magic sorority’s attack and (in an attempt on the production staff to maybe power a sequel) taking the device that powers Alpha Nu’s magic, an Eternal Flame. (This movie shouldn’t be confused with the earlier 1978 movie, where Sarah uses telekinesis.)
> 
> In the movie, Esme’s name is pronounced “ess-ME,” if you’re wondering. She wasn’t given a last name in the movie, but I’ve given her a last name in this story for plot-related reasons.

**one.**

There was a nook in the basement where Alpha Nu Gamma’s Eternal Flame was. The Alpha Nu president before Corrine designed the nook to be for emergencies, such as if the Eternal Flame grew out of control. Esme told the other members about it. 

Corrine never listened to Esme. (It probably came from Corrine being several decades old.) Corrine often made Esme appear to be a lunkhead in front of the other sisters. Of course the other sisters never went down to the basement for cover when Pi Epsilon Delta cast a spell around their chapter house.

It was pointless to chase after the One now. Corrine died trying to kill said One, Lindsay Goodwin. The other sisters were consumed by the flame as well. Their deaths wouldn’t make Esme immortal—only the One could keep Esme alive forever through the little bit of the Eternal Flame she had in her cauldron—but their deaths could keep Esme’s powers going for a while. How long, she didn’t know. The Eternal Flame now burned brighter than it ever did while Alpha Nu was seeking the One. 

Esme decided to start a new chapter of Alpha Nu Gamma somewhere. Northwestern State University and Louisiana Tech were nearby. And unlike the other members of Alpha Nu, Esme could pass herself off as a student at Grambling State easily. The new Alpha Nu would go back to Temple Hill and get vengeance for the old Alpha Nu. How she would avenge old Alpha Nu wasn’t clear in her head. Setting up a new chapter of Alpha Nu with a flame in a cauldron and a weapon wasn’t the most solid of plans, but Esme was certain it would work.

 

**two.**

Esme’s plans changed after going to a Waffle House close to Temple Hill. If she was going to take her vengeance out on Pi Epsilon Delta, she needed food and coffee before even thinking of a new city and college to settle in. She couldn’t be hungry, after all.

While eating a waffle and black coffee at Waffle House, Esme’s eyes drifted to a discarded copy of _The Times,_ Shreveport’s local paper. The paper was folded over to the obituaries. Esme looked at the photos of the recently deceased and their obits.

Esme’s waiter appeared at the counter. “What happened to the girl that was sitting here?” the waiter asked Esme.

“What?” Esme chuckled. “I’m right here.”

Esme noticed the waiter looking at _The Times_. The waiter screamed after looking at the newspaper and left the counter.

Esme had a compact mirror in her car; she brought it with her to the Waffle House. She opened the compact. Esme had accidentally shapeshifted into one of the women in the obits. Without thinking, she shapeshifted back into herself. Esme realized she now possessed Corinne’s shapeshifting abilities. 

While still sawing through her waffle, Esme also realized starting a new chapter of Alpha Nu meant she, as President or even House Mother, depending on how long it took Alpha Nu to be reestablished, would mean she would have to redistribute the powers the Eternal Flame granted her. And, quite possibly, she could actually go without sacrificing a virgin or a goat. Hell, maybe she didn’t need to sacrifice virgins at all. Supposedly everyone in Alpha Nu wasn’t a virgin, and the Eternal Flame, although it was small and currently contained, was raging. Maybe Esme couldn’t smell virgins after all. Maybe she only wanted an excuse to smell girls. She still needed to drop the claim without potential sacrifices to threaten, anyway. Claiming to smell virgins sounded like a bad pickup line out of context.

Esme finished her waffle and coffee and left a generous tip—about twenty-five percent of her bill—for her waiter.

 

**three.**

The last place Esme wanted to shop was the Gap. She could live with Banana Republic. But the Gap? She wanted to die. But she needed new clothes. Pi Epsilon Delta destroyed all her clothes the other day. 

Esme couldn’t believe she considered nearly fleeing the city to start a new sorority coven. But then again, she was alone, and she thought she could only manipulate fire and enhance her strength. With these new powers she could take down Pi Epsilon Delta without them even knowing she was still alive.

 

**four.**

The Alpha Nu house looked like a shell of its former self. The Eternal Flame burned down the inside, leaving it charred and barely standing erect. Caution tape fenced off the house from the street. This wasn’t a problem for Esme. One of the Alpha Nu sisters had the power of invisibility. Not only could she turn herself invisible, she turned anything she wanted to make invisible as well. No one noticed when Esme slipped past the caution tape to walk inside the Alpha Nu house.

Esme brought with her a near-empty box of matches. She walked down to a gas pipe in the house. Inside the box of matches were matches, already ignited and burned to nearly their ends. Esme looked for the perfect lit match to set up by the gas pipe, one that could blend into the charred ruins of Alpha Nu. She placed the other charred matches close to, but not by, the gas pipe. She waved her hand and cast a spell that removed her fingerprints on the matches. 

Before she left the Alpha Nu house, she left another box of unlit matches beside the Alpha Nu house. Esme was careful to take out the right number of matches that corresponded to the ones left inside the house, as well as her fingerprints.

 

**five.**

Esme walked into campus security with curly black hair and glasses, using Corrine’s powers of disguise to her advantage. She told them she saw one of the Pi Epsilon Delta sisters enter the Alpha Nu house as the other Pi Epsilon sisters blocked the Alpha Nu yard. Campus security called the Shreveport Police Department. A police escort took the disguised Esme for a police statement.

“I saw these women in blue capes surround the Alpha Nu Delta house,” Esme said, disguising her voice with a thick Southern accent. “One of them ran into the house. I think I saw her with a box of matches. She was a new student, and I think she just joined Pi Epsilon Delta. I think her name was Sarah Goodwin.”

 

**six.**

It occurred to Esme that she needed to write obituaries for Alpha Nu. With her hair tied back, Esme found herself at the _Times_ building, in the obituary department. She convinced everyone in the building that no, it wasn’t her first day, and she’d been working at the paper for years. She talked to her newly-gained editor about those missing Alpha Nu girls, and wouldn’t it be nice for all of them to have obituaries, just in case no one could find them alive? The editor agreed and set her on assignment to Temple Hill to interview the Gamma Theta Delta fraternity and everyone else that knew the Alpha Nu girls. 

Esme still had her laptop. It was in her car when Pi Epsilon Delta trapped the Alpha Nu girls in their house. And it had a wireless connection. Esme instead travelled to a stand-alone Starbucks, far from the Times building, to drink a latte, have a croissant, and work on the Alpha Nu obituaries.

The first thing Esme typed on her Word document was “ESME RAINES,” in capital letters. The next sentence was “Esme Raines, 21, died in 2006 in the home of the Alpha chapter of Alpha Nu Gamma sorority, on the campus of Temple Hill University.”

The next day, Esme planned to visit Temple Hill’s student newspaper office, _The Northern Account,_ to plan a layout for “The Extinguished Flames of Alpha Nu Gamma.”

 

**seven.**

“Sorority arrested and charged with murder and arson,” a headline on the front page of _The Times_ said. Esme was reading the paper in a Denny’s south of Shreveport, eating pancakes. “One student lit a fatal match as sorority looked on,” the sub headline of the article said. Esme skimmed through the piece and discovered Temple Hill shut down Pi Epsilon Delta’s chapter there. She smiled and sipped her coffee.

 

**eight.**

Esme leaned against her railing in her small French Quarter apartment. Blowing a trail of cigarette smoke in the air, she thought about how, maybe, Alpha Nu Gamma might have survived if she was president. After all, Corrine was stupid enough to let almost all the Alpha Nu sisters be consumed by the flame. And all because Corrine couldn’t figure out who was the One from the start.

Esme had her vengeance against Pi Epsilon Delta. Now far away from Temple Hill, she now felt that, if she ended up reforming Alpha Nu at Northwestern State University, Louisiana Tech, or Grambling State, she would be forever waging war against Pi Epsilon. In what capacity, she didn’t know. Maybe she would’ve ended up like Corrine, a tyrant who hid her true age to stay president of Alpha Nu. Maybe she would’ve ended up as the house mother or like the woman who pretended to be Lindsay and Sarah’s mother. Whatever path she chose, she saw herself trying to find a goat farm nearby where she decided to reform Alpha Nu all to keep the Eternal Flame placated. Later, she saw everyone in Alpha Nu carpooling to Temple Hill to attempt to destroy Pi Epsilon. Sometimes she imagined her version of Alpha Nu falling to Pi Epsilon’s magic. Sometimes she imagined Alpha Nu prevailing, only to see Pi Epsilon doing battle wherever Esme set Alpha Nu’s new base of operations. And every scenario never had an ending.

Acquiring the Alpha Nu sisters’ powers were a blessing for Esme. Sure, Esme was able to disband Pi Epsilon Delta. But the false evidence Esme planted on them could not hold up against them in court. And Esme wasn’t sure Pi Epsilon knew if she was faking her death. Fleeing Shreveport for New Orleans seemed like the best thing she could do. After seeing the good news in the _Times,_ Esme and the Eternal Flame drove down Interstate 49 until she reached Opelousas. She went down another highway, but she didn’t feel safe until she reached Interstate 10, on her way to New Orleans.

New Orleans was a great place to be for a fugitive witch. It was far bigger than Shreveport, at least in terms of cities in Louisiana. And the city was rooted in supernatural lore to the point where it wouldn’t seem weird to live next door to a witch.

Esme still had matters to take care of. Explaining to her family she was still alive, and not to cut her bank account off, not yet. How she was going to make a living for herself in New Orleans if she wasn’t going to be mostly home bound, aside from the occasional food run. But Esme wanted to relax after going on the run and settling into her apartment. She could finally let her curls grow out, instead of the straight hair she had with Alpha Nu. With no Alpha Nu, her hair didn’t need to confirm to Alpha Nu’s standards. It was humid in New Orleans. Why attempt to straighten hair in this weather, anyway? There was also the question of if the Eternal Flame in her fireplace accepted goat stew meat as an acceptable sacrifice rather than a whole goat. But that was a question for later. Esme took another drag from her cigarette, looked out over the railing of her apartment, and smiled, happy to be alive and away from Temple Hill and Alpha Nu.

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> Temple Hill University was never given a location in the movie, but the movie was filmed at a college in Shreveport, LA. I decided to set the fictional university there, especially since the university has a distinctive Southern United States look to it.
> 
> Waffle House is a chain of American restaurants known for American breakfast fare (obviously waffles, coffee, egg dishes, et. al.) The chain is mostly widespread in the American Southern states.
> 
> Denny’s is a chain of American restaurants also known for American breakfast fare. It’s more of a nationwide chain.


End file.
